The forgotten meaning of Christmas

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Not far from where I live, there’s a bustling Christmas market that draws big crowds, depicting life in first century Israel. The market is complete with costumed characters—merchants, beggars, Roman soldiers, and shepherds.

Easily missed, tucked away in a back corner of the marketplace, is a young, shabbily-dressed couple laying their newborn in an animal’s feeding trough.

Isn’t this a perfect depiction of the first Christmas—and almost every Christmas since? Somewhere among the leg hams and frantic shopping and scattered wrapping paper is a God trying to get our attention.

But his humility means that without attentive hearts, we could celebrate the season and still miss his appearing.

The baby born that first Christmas night became a man who utterly reshaped the world. But in 2018, so much ideology and distraction has meant that we’re almost entirely unaware of Jesus’ influence on the West.

God’s humility means that without attentive hearts, we could celebrate the season and still miss his appearing.

Far from being an outdated superstition, Christianity has shaped our civilisation and our lives for the better.

It is no coincidence that the nations with the deepest Christian roots are also the safest to live in. Transparency International publishes a global corruption index that year after year finds the least corrupt countries to be those historically most shaped by Jesus.

Far from being an outdated superstition, Christianity has shaped our civilisation and our lives for the better.

But stories speak louder than statistics, so consider the life of John Wesley.

In seventeenth-century England, faith and morality had collapsed. Millions of slaves were being shipped to America as England, France and Spain fought for monopoly of the slave trade.

Financial greed was rife. Laws were being manipulated to favour the ruling classes, sharply dividing the rich and poor. If you stole a sheep, snared a rabbit or picked a pocket, you could be hung as thousands gather to watch. Even worse, you could be shipped off to a faraway prison-island called Australia.

Millions of English people had never set foot in a school. The Bible was a closed book

Three-quarters of children died before their fifth birthday. Unwanted newborns were left in the streets to die. Gin had overtaken beer as the national beverage, and alcoholism was destroying families, leading to violence, prostitution and murder.

Gloveless boxing had become a favourite sport for men and women, and it drew massive crowds. Pornography was freely available. As soon as a theatre opened it would be surrounded by brothels. Men were even known to sell their wives at cattle auctions.

Up and down the coastline of the British Isles, ships were lured onto rocks by false signals so they could be plundered, and the sailors were left to drown.

Millions of slaves were being shipped to America as England, France and Spain fought for monopoly of the slave trade.

Millions of English people had never set foot in a school. The Bible was a closed book.

Enter John Wesley.

He’d studied at Oxford and was ordained as a priest. After reading the Bible and searching his heart, he realised he was a Christian in name only. At the age of 34, he put his faith in Jesus.

Of that moment he wrote: “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine.”

This changed his life. He started sharing his faith in workhouses, prisons, and any church that would welcome him. Encouraged by his friend George Whitfield, he preached his first open-air sermon in April 1739.

The Great Awakening, a movement that was about to transform Europe and America, was born.

Wesley and other revivalists endured three decades of public abuse and violence. Drunken mobs attacked them as they spoke. Bulls were driven into their captivated crowds, and musical instruments were played nearby to drown out their preaching. When struck by rocks, Wesley would wipe away the blood and keep on preaching.

He started sharing his faith in workhouses, prisons, and any church that would welcome him.

But never once did he lose his temper. His desire was to point his nation to Jesus and reclaim England from corruption, believing that when people follow Jesus, their societies change.

Slowly the teachings of Jesus began to take root in people’s minds. His enemies were disarmed and won to Christ. Soldiers, miners, smugglers, fishermen, men, women and children would remove their hats, kneel down and were emotionally overcome as Wesley pointed them to God’s grace.

To teach and disciple the thousands coming to faith, Wesley established hundreds of faith communities across Britain, Scotland and Ireland.

He was unstoppable. He got up at four each morning and preached his first sermon at five. By the end of his life, he’d prepared and preached 45,000 sermons, written 300 books, and also a commentary on every verse of the Bible—while travelling a quarter of a million miles on horseback in rain, hail and shine.

Wesley was unstoppable.

He’d published his thoughts condemning the slave trade, and the last letter he wrote was to William Wilberforce, who continued the fight. He opened medical dispensaries and vocational training for the unemployed and raised money to feed and clothe prisoners, the helpless and the aged.

He died at the age of 88, and no coach was needed for his funeral because he’d arranged for six unemployed people to be paid a pound each to carry his body to the grave.

In the last decade of his life, Wesley was the most loved figure in Britain.

Slavery was abolished. Prisons were reformed. Industrial workers were given rights. The Salvation Army was founded, along with George Muller’s orphanages, the YMCA, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and the RSPCA.

He’d helped purge his nation’s soul of filth and bring it back from the brink of destruction.

The power of the Great Awakening wasn’t merely the threat that God’s watching, so you shouldn’t do bad things. Islam also teaches this, but in Islam, Allah is too majestic to enter dirty stables or filthy hearts.

Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

The Great Awakening was powerful because Jesus does what no other God can do. He changes people from the inside and turns their lives around. As we receive his pardon and grace, we’re cleaned up and made new. And our world is transformed.

Over and over, and in countless ways, Jesus has shaped the West. This Christmas, in perhaps the subtlest of ways, God is trying to get your attention. Don’t miss him.

Kurt Mahlburg is the Youth and Young Adults Pastor at Hills Baptist Aldgate in the Adelaide Hills and blogs at kurtmahlburg.blog.

The summary of John Wesley’s life was adapted from The Book That Made Your World by Vishal Mangalwadi.